Weekend in Wilmington

This weeked marked a lot of firsts for Clare and our family and also a birthday celebration for LD! We leftThursday evening around 7pm and drove 3 1/2 hours to Wilmington. Our hope was that Clare would sleep in the car, but that didn't happen til about 10pm! We arrived at our hotel (a first for Clare...sleeping in the same hotel room as us), settled in and went to sleep. We knew the first night would go well arriving so late, but we felt really good about it all sleeping peacefully :)

Friday was LD's birthday and after Clare decided it was time to wake up extra early we gave LD all his birthday presents. I had saved any cards or presents that came in the mail so he had a bunch of fun things to open!! Then we decided to head to Wrightsville Beach...another first for Clare. I had very high expectations for Clare at the beach because she loves water so much, but she was extremely apprehensive. In her defense the waves were really huge and could knock her down at just knee deep. We spent most of the morning there and it was a beautiful perfect day to be on the water. The great thing about Wrightsville Beach is there are not many tourists, especially at 9am!! Of everything we did on the beach, Clare loved chasing the seagulls the most..go figure :) We headed back for showers and lunch and Clare desperately needed a nap from our late night getting in. So we put her down and figured we would just take advantage of an early afternoon nap as well. Well...Clare and LD slept for 3 hours, seriously. You know how dark hotel rooms are, so at about 3pm I decided I was going to have to just wake them up. I had been sitting by the window attempting to read and it was kind of ridiculous the whole day was flying by!!!

So Friday evening we headed to downtown Wilmington to walk around, or so we thought. It was 97 degrees and as soon as we parked and walked one block we were all done and miserable. We ended up not doing much sighseeing in Wilmington and instead headed for an early birthday dinner for LD at Wrightsville Beach and ended the day with ice cream! Night two went really well and after we put Clare down we had brought headphones and a portable dvd player and just watched movies in bed...success!!

Saturday we left Wilmington and were headed to Greensboro for a cookout with some great friends. We stopped in Raleigh to visit some friends and then stopped downtown at the Science Museum. It is free (always a bonus) and huge. It's four floors and has dinosaurs, a butterfly house, fish and turtles, and tons of room for Clare to roam around on our travel day! It was a perfect stop for us. We left there and went to our cookout, which was so much fun. LD's best friend, Derek, and his wife Katie grew up with LD and moved down to NC the same time we did. They are like family and we are so thankful for them and thankful they let us crash at their house often :) They had friends over and Clare ended up having 2 little girls the same age as her to play with. It was a fun evening!

We headed back home this morning, after a stop at Cracker Barrel for breakfast and have been doing laundry and relaxing!! It is so fun to have these short weekend getaways and we are so grateful for family time.